Two scholars: Jesus was a #MeToo victim because he was stripped before the Crucifixion

The Conversation, which I thought was a site for intellectual discourse (its motto is “Academic rigor, journalistic flair”), is increasingly publishing bizarre pieces that lack both rigor and flair. One of these, by Katie Edwards and David Tombs, insists on dragging Jesus into today’s sexual harassment debate, arguing that because Jesus was stripped during the Crucifixion, he should be recognized as a victim of sexual abuse and violence. Click on the screenshot to see this dire piece:

Dr. Katie Edwards is Director of SIIBS [the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies], and Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Culture and Society, and she participates in The Shiloh Project: Rape Culture, Religion and The Bible, a joint venture of the Universities of Sheffield, Leeds, and Auckland. Tombs is the Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago. Both are insistent that we pay attention to the fact that Jesus was stripped as part of his Crucifixion. And both apparently see this as a historical reality.

As I just verified by reading the bits of the four Gospels dealing with the Crucifixion, most mention the disrobing of Jesus. Although Luke doesn’t note any stripping, Matthew, Mark, and John say that Jesus was first cloaked in a robe to mock him as King of the Jews, and then the robe was removed and Jesus walked to the site of the Crucifixion. There he was apparently stripped, for his clothes were “parted” (divided among the soldiers) after he was hung up on the cross. But he wasn’t naked while dragging the cross to Golgotha.

Nevertheless, The Conversation allows these two authors, who apparently have too much time on their hands, to bloviate about the “sexual abuse” suffered by Jesus, which consisted solely of his pre-Crucifixion disrobing. Some quotes:

The idea that Jesus himself experienced sexual abuse may seem strange or shocking at first, but crucifixion was a “supreme punishment” and the stripping and exposure of victims was not an accidental or incidental element. It was a deliberate action that the Romans used to humiliate and degrade those they wished to punish. It meant that the crucifixion was more than just physical, it was also a devastating emotional and psychological punishment. [JAC: note that here they don’t mention sexual abuse.]

The convention in Christian art of covering Christ’s nakedness on the cross with a loincloth is perhaps an understandable response to the intended indignity of Roman crucifixion. But this should not prevent us from recognising that the historical reality would have been very different.

Historical reality? Do Edwards and Tombs not know that there is no extra-Biblical evidence for the Crucifixion, and nothing outside scripture that says he was stripped? Nowhere do they even consider the possibility that this story was fictional, though perhaps they’d just say in response, “Well, he was sexually abused in fiction! That’s just as important.”

And how do we know that there wouldn’t have been a loincloth replacing Jesus’s garments? We have no “historical reality”, as there is no way to cross-check the made-up stuff in the Bible. In fact, there is no extra-Biblical evidence for a person on whom Jesus was even based, though theologians twist themselves into pretzels trying to claim that the Bible itself is sufficient to prove Jesus’s existence if not his divinity. (Similarly, Paul Bunyan is sufficient evidence for a giant blue ox, and Beowulf for a fearsome monster named Grendel.)

Stripping Jesus, even if it did happen, would most likely have been to humiliate him, not sexually abuse him. Still, the authors strain at gnats to consider such stripping not just humiliation or simple abuse, but sexual abuse.

It seems to me that if abuse is to have a “sexual” aspect, then there has to be something sex-related in it. Jesus wasn’t leered at (at least, the Gospels don’t mention it), nor was he sexually violated. Although the authors say that if Jesus had been a woman, the sexual abuse would have been obvious, I don’t buy that, for a naked woman is more likely to be the object of sexual attention than a naked man. An equally plausible interpretation is that, by being stripped of his clothes, as was Vercingetorix in the paragraph below, he was stripped of his authority and dignity:

Some sceptics might respond that stripping a prisoner might be a form of violence or abuse, but it is misleading to call this “sexual violence” or “sexual abuse”. Yet if the purpose was to humiliate the captive and expose him to mockery by others, and if the stripping is done against his will and as a way to shame him in public, then recognising it as a form of sexual violence or sexual abuse seems entirely justified. The way that the stripping of Vercingetorix, King of the Arverni, is depicted in the first episode of the first series of the HBO series Rome is an example of this.

Wikipedia, by the way, tells a different story of Vercingetroix’s fate:

According to Plutarch, Caes. 27.8-10, Vercingetorix surrendered in a dramatic fashion, riding his beautifully adorned horse out of Alesia and around Caesar’s camp before dismounting in front of Caesar, stripping himself of his armor and sitting down at his opponent’s feet, where he remained motionless until he was taken away. Caesar provides a first-hand contradiction of this account, De Bell. Gal. 7.89, describing Vercingetorix’s surrender much more modestly. He was imprisoned in the Tullianum in Rome for almost six years, before being publicly displayed in Caesar’s triumph in 46 BC. He was executed after the triumph, probably by strangulation in his prison, as ancient custom would have it.

In the end, why is it so important for the authors to claim that Jesus was a victim of sexual abuse? Because, they assert, unless we recognize the sexual humiliation aspect of the Crucifixion, we’ll be resistant to recognizing sexual abuse in our own society!

This is not just a matter of correcting the historical record. If Jesus is named as a victim of sexual abuse it could make a huge difference to how the churches engage with movements like #MeToo, and how they promote change in wider society. This could contribute significantly to positive change in many countries, and especially in societies where the majority of people identify as Christian.

A HUGE DIFFERENCE? Are these authors living in Cloud-Cuckoo Land? But wait—there’s more!

. . . We may not want to dwell on the disturbing indignity of crucifixion for the whole year, but it is not right to forget about it completely either. The sexual abuse of Jesus is a missing part of Passion and Easter story retellings. It’s appropriate to recognise Jesus as a victim of sexual violence to address the continuing stigma for those who’ve experienced sexual abuse, especially men.

Lent offers a period in which this stark reality of crucifixion might be recalled and connected to the important questions that movements like #MeToo are raising for the churches and for wider society. Once we acknowledge the sexual abuse of Jesus perhaps we’ll be more willing to acknowledge sexual abuse in our own contexts.

There is nothing, it seems, that can’t be folded into the movement against the sexual abuse of women by theologians who desperately want to be relevant. But we don’t need theology to have this important discussion. Yes, men can be sexually abused too, but where is the “sex” dimension of the crucifixion? In fact, dragging fictional characters into the movement (and we might as well include the rape victims in novels The Raj Quartet and A Passage to India) does absolutely nothing to help abused women. Are Edwards and Tombs serious about the urgency of recognizing the abuse of Jesus as helping us recognize the abuse of women (and some men) in the present? You have to be either nuts or an intersectional theologian to think that.

All this goes to demonstrate that theologians have too much time on their hands, as expected when they’re studying, as Dan Barker puts it, “A subject without an object.” And they want their dusty old works of fiction to remain relevant.

Finally, if you want more palaver, the article links to this:

“Now available! The recording of Professor David Tombs and Dr Jayme Reaves speaking at the Sheffield Institute for Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (SIIBS) on 16th January 2018.”

If you want to sit through an hour of this, click on the screenshot below.

Once we acknowledge the sexual abuse of Jesus perhaps we’ll be more willing to acknowledge sexual abuse in our own contexts.

Or perhaps concern about a long-dead person’s victimization will crowd out concern for present-day victims of sexual abuse.

While I’m no mythicist, I’d note that I’m not about to believe that the details of the crucifixion are beyond dispute. I don’t suppose it’s unlikely that a victim of crucifixion was stripped, but then maybe we should just remember victims of crucifixion, not just the one.

I think this is publication inflation–got to publish something, let’s just pull out an old tale and try to make it a new concern.

These deep thinkers should know, better even than us heathen, that the whole crucifixion story isn’t historical, it’s just an allegorical retelling of the 22nd Psalm. Of course Jesus was stripped before he was crucified — how else were those soldiers going to cast lots to divide his clothing (thereby fulfilling Ps.22:18)?

If they were really concerned about sex abuse in the New Testament they’d be digging into Jesus’ curious relationship with the naked boy seen running away in Mark 14:51.

I believe you got this right, the people with too much time on their hands. Way too much time in this case. Not only a fiction, had nothing to do with sexual harassment or assault and just for kicks, lets say it did. How does anything that happened 2000 years ago have any point in today’s society. It is the same kind of delusional thinking that transfers a supposed gun law 240 years ago to today’s world. It does not transfer.

Isn’t there a guy in the Philippines somewhere who gets crucified most years – actually around this time of year. (Isn’t Easter coming up some time soon – there’s no mention of it in my diary, but I don’t think I even put this year’s list of religious holidays into the front. I certainly didn’t look at it.)

This kind of stuff is in part why the University of Wisconsin is looking to limit some of their Liberal Arts majors, eliminating some of them as degree categories. While they were not on the list, I’m pretty sure the world would not spin off it’s axis if gender studies, “insert oppressed group” studies, or theology were eliminated from university degree programs.

I believe it was pretty common to remove clothes and humiliate the person in whatever way as part of the punishment.
“Seneca the Younger wrote: ‘I see crosses there, not just of one kind but made in many different ways: some have their victims with head down to the ground; some impale their private parts; others stretch out their arms on the gibbet’.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion

It erroneous to label that type of torture “‘gender-based violence'” or sexual assault as they are defined today. Additionally, whether Jesus was a real, regular person or not in any context is irrelevant to the issues we have today.

“’The reason they go for crucifixion is that often as well as killing somebody, it’s the exposure and the humiliation and also the warning to other people,’ says Timon Screech, professor of Japanese history at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.”

“There were also cases where Japanese soldiers crucified people in World War Two.”

“Today, a punishment referred to as ‘crucifixion’ can still be imposed by courts in Saudi Arabia.

“’Crucifixions take place after the beheading,’ says Amnesty International, which campaigns against all forms of capital punishment.”

“’The body, with the separated head sewn back on, is hung from or against a pole in public to act as a deterrent.’”

Comment #1 sshort is correct – her interpretation that we can see the Passion of Christ story as one partly of sexual abuse is irrelevant to Dr. Katie Edwards.

It’s my impression that’s just a hook for her to hang her agenda on – the Bible & Jesus were her soft route into academia & now that she’s through the door she can move onto her real evolved interests which seems to be sexual politics & something she calls post-feminism [I don’t know what post-feminism is]. She could have taken any soft ‘x studies’ degree & ended up where she wanted to be in discussion space.

I don’t believe for one minute that she’s a ‘believer’ – that’s for the little people & there’s nothing in her writings anywhere I’ve found that she takes a stance as a believer or as a historian of the Bible.

I’m grateful every day for my job. It pays the bills. It gives me a voice and a platform […] I imagined that universities were a different, nobler space, less affected by inequalities and therefore harassment, sexual assault and bullying than other places of work. I was, of course, naive. […] The Shiloh Project is in part, as well as being a shared area of research, a response to the culture of tolerance around harassment and bullying in HE that helps to support and perpetuate it. The vast majority of women have experienced sexual harassment at work and I’m no different. From my first full-time job working at a brewery at the age of 18 when the middle-aged ‘Business Development Managers’ took bets to see which one could get me to have sex and return with evidence, to my first permanent job in a university when a senior male colleague took photos of me with his mobile phone from across the table while I was trying to tell him about my research priorities for the next year.

After a few further similar episodes with the senior male colleague, and with little support or guidance from colleagues who knew what was happening, I approached a very senior female colleague in the same institution to ask her advice. […] Her advice was that I should be ‘more charming’ to my then line-manager. Like everywhere else, academia can be isolating, especially when you’re facing harassment and bullying from people in positions of power. In light of our various experiences, the directors and members of The Shiloh Project wanted to create a supportive and inclusive research community and be visible, vocal and united in our stance against sexual violence, assault, harassment and bullying.

NB I’m not doubting her experience of male interactions in the workplace.

Jesus likely didn’t exist, but, of the people who did exist back then, nearly all of them were probably sexually abused at some point. Were you a peasant woman? You were probably raped, especially if a band of raiders or army came to town at any point. Were you a man in any sort of fighting force? You were probably raped by superiors. Were you a child of nobility? You probably had some elders who molested you. Were you a young man in ancient Greece? Whatever your role, it was probably considered your duty to give sexual relief to your betters. Were you a slave? Well, that’s unfortunate, because…

The world was not a nice place back then. It kind of renders the question of whether any particular person from most of history suffered sexual abuse irrelevant.

I’m of the opinion that those (including the authors of this stupidity) who go around meditating on the Passion and making the Stations of the Cross, qne “getting into” the fantasy of torture and torment and degradation, are engaging in voyeuristic sadomasochism and they need to examine their consciences. They are the ones introducing a sexual dimension into the crucifixion, and a very perverse sexual dimension at that.

You’re right about Edwards “‘doing’ feminism of some stripe”. However, she’s using an extremely loaded, hoary, and highly developed symbolic system to do her feminism, and one can’t disregard the broader aspects of the devotion; and I think she should have done her homework first, though, of course, that’s not necessary when Narrative takes precedence uber alles.

Since Mel Gibson has his very own ultra-orthodox church tucked away in the hills near Los Angeles, he can indulge in all manner of two-for-one, sadomasochistic sin and atonement rituals, culminating in the consumption of Christ’s body and blood during mass.

I don’t know what postmodern, post Vatican II Catholics do these days, but for those who’re old school, it was a big deal to make the Stations of the Cross, especially during Lent and most especially on Good Friday (Yikes! That’s today). One was supposed to reflect on each one of the stations, really get into to the suffering and victimization and “feel the pain.” (However, I just read that Pope Francis declared that “The Way of the Cross is not sadomasochistic.” The pope has spoken. I stand corrected.) Don’t forget that the Church has a venerable history of mortification of the flesh, including self-scourging and other practices that today are considered telltale signs of serious mental disturbances. And the flesh must be mortified lest the flesh succumb to the sins of the flesh, of which concupiscence is surely at the top of the list. There is also a rich body of literature that I’d call sadomasochistic which includes descriptions of martyrs’ being tortured and tormented to death, and the astounding and (to me) astoundingly grotesque perfervid hallucinations and delusions of the anorexic holy women (a few men), who wallowed in the blood of Christ.

I’ll look for he book you reference below. Sounds like one for me to read.

Which raises the important question: Did Jesus ever get laid? It seems kinda tragic if the poor bugger got nailed up without ever having had it off.

Yet the Bible, which is so explicit about everybody else doing it every which way, seems curiously reticent about Jesus’s sex life. I’m surprised the churches haven’t obsessed about that, they obsess about everyone else’s. But then, since J was apparently unmarried, I suppose to admit that he ever did it would be tantamount to countenancing Sex Before Marriage, so I can see why they’d go all coy on the subject.

(I like to think he had a few nights of wild passion with some of his female followers. All that charisma should have been good for something. Oops, here I am, sympathising with a mythical character.)

Being fucked-up about what (and indeed, who) to do with your sex organs seems to be par for the course for the religiously active. If there was a Levantine Jewish reformer who got nailed up without raising enough fuss to be recorded by anyone important, the odds are pretty good that he was fucked up over sex in some way.

This remarkable new book, the first of its kind, is an analysis of a phenomenon that biblical scholars have scarcely taken notice of, much less studied critically—the use of the Bible in advertising.

Focussing on the figure of Eve, Admen and Eve shows how she has become the ultimate postfeminist icon of female sexual and consumer power, promoting self-regarding individual choice over collective political action for today’s ‘I’m not a feminist but …’ generation.

Contemporary advertising, Edwards shows, deploys a collage of images simultaneously reflecting and dictating the ideals and ideologies that inform much of Western culture. Exploiting the cultural mythology that surrounds Eve, advertisers constantly recycle images of this biblical figure because she is easily recognizable by the target consumer. In so doing, they are shaping how women and men see each other and themselves and how they treat each other and themselves, persuading them to become their culturally dictated dream through the products they consume.

Eve in advertising is then a revealing example of how the Bible functions today. But Admen and Eve is not a value-free and apolitical analysis; it is an incitement to the exposure and subversion of today’s dominant cultural attitudes to gender roles.

Katie B. Edwards is Lecturer in Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield.

How is Eve a “postfeminist icon” & does “postfeminist” mean non-feminist? SOURCE

And HERE’S her other book on the Bible that’s in a similar vein. Note that one can write these books as a non-believer & with no knowledge of the Bible other than its cultural impact in the media. Easy stuff.

More specifically, it’s just a common complaint dressed up in all the right buzzwords. (Ever played ‘buzzword bingo’?)
You may have noticed that every word quoted has loaded connotations. In fact, that phrase quoted there is an almost perfect buzzword score. Whether it’s remotely true of the book it’s blurbing about is quite irrelevant.

By the way, you could substitute ‘Mona Lisa’ or ‘Wonder Woman’ or ‘Marilyn Monroe’ for Eve in that blurb and it would still work exactly the same.

Well, I’m not 100% convinced, but will take your word for it. Indeed, I find it difficult to distinguish it from satire. If really real, I think a phrase by a not so loved icon is in order: sad!
I always loved Monty Python, btw.

1) The #metoo movement is about people being humiliated in secret and being silenced about it!!!!
The J-guy (if existent) was humiliated in public and as such has limited relationship with any metoo business.

2) Bart Ehrman (whom I trust on these matters) states that ALL victims of crucifixion were stripped, and that this was essentially a matter of political humiliation.https://ehrmanblog.org/why-romans-crucified-people/
We can conclude that it was not sexual in nature, and that the J-guy’s experience was not unique (provisionally assuming his existence.)

These two are just trying to get in a good word for Jesus before #MeToo starts pointing out that Jesus is God, and God ordered multiple rapes throughout the Old Testament.

And not just in the aftermath of battle. For example, Lot was saved because God thought he was a good man. This was the man who handed over his wife and virgin daughters to a mob to be repeatedly raped. Later, God took Lot’s wife away, so he had sex with his daughters instead. God really does have a penchant for incest.

It can instead be argued that the rape and sexual abuse of women and children is something men in our society learn from the Bible, where it’s repeatedly advocated and endorsed by God.

Easter is a particularly fraught time for Jesus. The sound of hammering can send him into paroxysms of terror, resulting in His PTSD flaring up so much that His only recourse is to visit His therapist without an appointment.

“The Shiloh Project: Rape Culture, Religion and The Bible, a joint venture of the Universities of Sheffield, Leeds, and Auckland. Tombs is the Howard Paterson Chair of Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago.”

Bugger! That’s a bit close to home (I’m in Auckland). I suppose I now have to join the club of embarrassed commenters whose alma maters have done something idiotic.

(I was at a tour of the University Engineering School recently and they all looked pretty normal to me. But then, those were engineering students).

I wish people would stop calling the guy “Jesus”. There was no man named Jesus in Biblical time. He did not have a special name then. He should not now. It is a dishonesty to do so. In modern Bibles there are men named Joshua. That is how He should be called too.